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An inventive imagination was a gift of the gods — or a curse if you couldn’t control it. Elsie would sometimes start talking, telling a story, say, and get so carried away, piling it on so thick, flying off on so many tangents, that she might as well have been speaking in tongues. If you pointed this out to her, her response would be to clam up.
By Sigrid NunezApril 2012In sixth grade I played football in rural Ash Creek, Arizona. My family had just moved there from a suburb of Phoenix, and my only prior experience with football had been when my dad would toss one around with my two younger brothers and me, drilling me in the chest with hard passes.
By Jerry D. Mathes IIApril 2012All that fall and into the winter, bulldozers and cranes cleared away the wooded top of Ransom Mountain, knocking down trees and shoveling dirt and rock into dump trucks, leaving behind a flat, barren expanse. Come spring, we were told, the mountain’s top and back would be a landfill that three counties would pay to use, creating jobs in town for the first time since the mines had shut down. But no one I knew thought very much about that.
By William BlackFebruary 2012After I flunked tenth grade, I went to an alternative school for two years until I tested out. Now I’m at a high school with a college track. My guidance counselor is Mr. Peboe. I think he might have a crush on me because he is always calling me into his office.
By Kristen WaresNovember 2011from his friend’s house, where they were filming / a movie starring my son in a love triangle. / My son, fifteen, has never been in a love right angle, / or even a love straight line, as far as I know.
By Jim DanielsNovember 2011It was the year they found a dead toddler in the bushes, head bashed in, bite marks and cigarette burns all over his body. He was wearing a T-shirt with multicolored lollipops across the front. It was November 1990.
By Jaquira DíazNovember 2011Taking violin lessons, requesting conscientious-objector status, protesting at the state capitol
By Our ReadersNovember 2011Contraband cinnamon, a coupon for a free turkey, evening constitutionals
By Our ReadersOctober 2011When the dogwoods bloom overnight and the oaks wake one morning with a full complement of leaves, spring has come to the Tidewater section of Virginia. Shad roe, orange and milky, appears on ice in the fish markets, and there are rumors of bluefish running out by the third island of the Chesapeake Bay.
By Dave ZobyOctober 2011Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
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